


Surgical Strike

by Tel



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beta Colony, Biological Warfare, Other, Politics, Trans Character, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-17
Updated: 2011-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tel/pseuds/Tel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Cetagandan bioweapon has forced Gregor Vorbarra to Beta Colony for secret medical treatment. Ivan, Dono, and Olivia are there for moral support.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surgical Strike

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Хирургический шок](https://archiveofourown.org/works/171834) by [jetta_e_rus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetta_e_rus/pseuds/jetta_e_rus), [Tel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tel/pseuds/Tel)



> I have no excuse for this one.
> 
> Written for the Winterfair Open Exchange. No archive warnings apply to this fic but it may contain content problematic for some readers.
> 
> For and with thanks to Philomytha.

_"I know this must be very difficult for you, Mr. Bleakman. But surely you are familiar with the concept that some things are far, far easier to break than fix?"_

_"Intimately," Gregor said._

* * *

Olivia could never have gotten away with that haircut on Barrayar. But it looked fantastic on her, a fringe of spiked hair in three colors. She could never have gotten away with that short a skirt, either, and she wore her partnered Betan earrings like a taunt.

Ivan sighed. It did the job all right. Next to her and Dono, nobody would notice their companion.

"How'd it go?" he asked awkwardly.

"I'm not a good candidate for reassignment," Gregor said, his voice so neutral as to be flat.

Ivan's eyes widened. "You're already a guy! You still have... bits!"

"They're not willing to work on me until they're sure the bioweapon's neutralized and..." he bit his lip.

"It's not?"

"It's not."

Ivan edged a little further away. "I thought the Duronas fixed that?"

"They couldn't. They normalized the hormone levels to mostly female, which stopped the..." Gregor made a slight gesture with two fingers, passing over the subject of the parts Ivan had barely observed on the jump ship as the physicians had struggled to keep him alive - the massive weight loss, the collapses, the shivering sweats, the eye color change... "But my endocrine system's still a disaster zone. And there have been... mental alterations."

"Um," Ivan said. He glanced at Dono, whose eyes were just as wary.

"You didn't mention this." Dono said, sounding more worried for the Emperor than alarmed. Ivan envied him that.

"It doesn't leave this room."

"Shit, Gregor..." His own voice was high, tight, and slightly panicked. "What kind of mental alterations?" Why the hell had Gregor shed his armsman in the Durona Clinic on Escobar and high-tailed it to Beta in secret with only him and the Vorrutyers, anyway?

"Sit down, Ivan." Gregor's voice was calm. Ivan bit his lip and carefully sat down on one of the couches. At Gregor's nod, Olivia sat as well, pulling Dono down with her. The Emperor hesitated for a long time, a mask of formality sliding over his features and then sliding off again. He sighed heavily.

"Once the Cetagandan lentiviral hit my cells five months ago I didn't have a chance. Small but noticeable chunks of my genome have been rewritten, and it triggered an autoimmune reaction to my remaining unaltered cells. Which was damn near fatal, but the intent doesn't seem to have been fatal. It was fairly clear early on what the intent was."

"You're feminizing very strongly, yes," Dono said.

"Wait," Ivan interrupted. "They were actually trying to turn you into a girl?"

"Yes, Lord Vorpatril," Gregor said patiently.

"I thought that was a side-effect."

"No."

Ivan stopped avoiding Gregor's gaze and looked at him, really examining him for the first time since they'd left Escobar. Gregor met his gaze steadily, with eyes that were clear and green and unsettlingly vulnerable-looking. His gaze slid down. Gregor's rail-thin post-illness physique had been filling out in all the wrong places. He had hips, now, barely, and a, well, bosom that that Ivan had spent the last few days trying to avoid looking at. He didn't look like a woman, though, or much of a man. Or even a hermaphrodite. He was just sort of subtly wrong-looking.

"Why?" he asked, baffled.

"Political, at a bet," Dono said grimly.

"So why can't they fix it?"

Gregor swallowed. "I... it's psychological. I can't handle being a man."

Dono's brows went up, a look of understanding on his face. "Induced transsexuality?"

Gregor's chin jerked in a nod. "Yes."

"If it's psychological, can't the Betans do something?" Olivia asked.

"They tend to feel it's much easier and more humane to change the body than the mind, love." Dono frowned.

"There are some therapies," Gregor said. "Either for individuals like Lord Dono that are transitioning from one sex to another without an underlying medical reason, or the rare individual who feels they are trapped in the wrong body but wishes to change their mental sex rather than their physical one."

"I actually mostly skipped that," Dono said. "I wasn't one of the problem cases. My mental body image adjusted fine."

Gregor nodded. "Some people adjust better than others. I... have not adjusted well."

"How bad is it?" Dono asked quietly.

"If I could fix this," Gregor said, "and I could fix it fast, and with nobody the wiser, I would absolutely be honor-bound to do it. All of the alternatives are terrible beyond belief. But... the idea fills me with complete revulsion. They can make me superficially masculine, though working sex organs are out of the question. I can pull off the act, I think. I've been doing it all my life. But... it'd destroy me."

"What are the alternatives?"

"Five years of Betan therapy, minimum, with targeted quasi-surgical intervention in the brain. They didn't sound optimistic. A lot of the connections I need are burned out, and there's some associated brain damage. Bluntly, I could not return to head the Imperium after that much mental rewiring by foreigners. Even Betan foreigners. Especially Betan foreigners, they have ideas."

"The Durona Group can't do it?" Olivia asked.

"No. And they may be Mark's, but they're Jacksonian to the bone."

"What else?"

"Suicide," Gregor said.

Dono's breath hissed in. "What else?"

Gregor looked away, his profile shadowed. "My current papers are for an ex-Ryoval sex slave from Mark's rescue operation. I die publicly, in that locked clinic on Escobar. Barrayar takes what vengeance for it we can, on what we can prove - though we can't prove a damn thing now. I disappear."

"Disappear?" Ivan said in a blank voice, still processing.

"Or you could go home," Dono said neutrally. "Sire."

"Do you think so, milady?" Gregor's response was instant and biting, full of raw emotion. Dono's eyes narrowed.

"Have you talked to Laisa?" Olivia asked.

"At length." Gregor said. "The primary issue is that I do not have the confidence of my ministers."

Olivia blinked. "But that's treason!"

Gregor paced a little, sighed, and sat heavily down beside Ivan. "It's about symbolism, Lady Olivia. You must understand that being the Emperor is not merely about ruling. I..." He touched his chest. "Barrayar unifies here. My life is public, my choices are public. I have to be the Barrayaran Imperium and make it real."

"Which is impossible without a penis," Dono cut in.

Gregor shot him an annoyed look. "With the right narrative, a woman could do it. If I had been born female... there are all sorts of stories, if you dig deep enough in the folklore. It is... somewhat acceptable that an extraordinary woman might strive to equal a man and emulate manly virtues."

The man who had once been Lady Donna snorted.

"A man... a war leader, choosing to emasculate himself, is something else again. It will be seen as weakness, open perversion." Gregor's expression was deadly serious. "Possibly hereditary perversion. If I go home publicly, as a woman, I am going nowhere but an asylum. To maintain the security of the Imperium, they cannot let me loose, they cannot let me lead, they cannot let me raise my children. If I go home secretly as a woman, my sons and daughters will be kept from me because of their rank and the nature of their upbringing."

"What about Laisa?" Olivia asked again.

"She... has to think of the children."

"No shit," Dono said. "But what about you and her?"

"She's the Empress of Barrayar, Dono." Gregor sounded weary. "She... simply cannot go around having a secret sapphic affair with her former husband. Her position is shaky enough as it is. If she steps outside the lines of chaste widowhood for one second, they'll be baying for her head. And there's everything else, too."

"But..."

"I don't want to talk about this," Gregor said, heading for his bedroom in the suite.

* * *

It was a month later that Ivan walked into the clinic with Olivia, trying not to look suspicious. Gregor's cover story was holding, as far as anyone could tell. The mortally ill Emperor wasn't officially dead yet, but the Imperium was fiercely bristling at all its neighbors, trying to put up a show of strength in the face of anticipated political turmoil.

'Lord Vorkosigan is on the Cetagandan frontier and he will -stay- there,' Gregor had said, when asked about Miles. Other political exigencies had forced Dono back to Barrayar. Ivan's diplomatic tasks on Beta were less vital, but no less life-consuming.

They found Gregor in a softly lit room off the main hall, with walls covered in pictures of beautiful women. Ivan glanced at one, letting Olivia take the lead here. Barrayaran, he realized, decoding her garments easily as standard working girl attire. The name Evgenia Rougeau was scribbled under her picture. He knew the city name after that, it was in Vorpatril's District. Under that was written: _murder_.

The next picture was Barrayaran too. And the next after that. A few from Earth, a terrifyingly beautiful Cetagandan. Another Barrayaran... he realized he'd stumbled on a morbid sort of memorial.

"Hello, Ivan," a woman's voice said from behind him.

He swallowed and turned. Her dark hair was shoulder-length now, and the masculinity had been carved out of her face. Barely a hint of an adam's apple, small, rounded breasts. She was tall enough to meet his eyes easily and her own eyes were still that startling green.

She cocked an eyebrow. He managed an adroit bow to avoid losing his composure. "At your service, milady."

"Just Margaret, please. Greta if you wish."

"Um," he said.

She sighed. "If that's too difficult for you, we'll manage. Is everything holding together?" They were both avoiding each other's gazes now. She studied the walls, he studied Olivia.

"As best it can. Um. I don't think this is the best place to talk about that, though."

"No," she said. Something in her tone of voice made Ivan look back at her. He winced, feeling like he was being subtly mocked somehow.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This is going to take some getting used to."

A gentle smile. "It really isn't going to be your problem, Ivan. But yes. Let's go."

The use of Mark's ultra-secure penthouse was frequently loaned to his friends, though Ivan normally wouldn't be counted as one of Mark's friends, per se. It was a very nice set-up, especially for Beta Colony. He'd have liked it better if the security situation allowed him to bring girls in, but nothing was perfect. There was always the Orb.

Ivan tried not to look over his shoulder as Gregor trailed him in. Olivia followed up the rear as the Emperor's other bodyguard. She checked them both for listening devices, and Ivan let out a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding when they were cleared.

He nodded at a diplomatic envelope on a side table. "There's something from Allegre for you. Your eyes only."

"I'll see to it tonight." Gregor said. "It's nice of him to try to keep me briefed, but this situation can't go on forever, and it's out of my hands now." She shook her head. "I admit that feels strange. It's almost more of a relief than everything else."

"There might be news from home, too," Olivia mentioned.

"...yes. I need to write to Laisa." Her face grew more somber. "I'll see to that tonight too."

"Good," Olivia said. "Make yourself at home. You don't need to make any rash decisions right away." She disappeared into the suite. "I bought you some underwear and things..."

Gregor flushed a little. "Thank you. I'll look at them later, Olivia."

"Do you need anything else?" Ivan asked, hearing the sound of cupboards sliding open. "I think Olivia's cooking dinner."

She snorted. "A drink or four. Except I shouldn't write home drunk."

"What's going to happen with you and Laisa?" Ivan asked as he obligingly raided Mark's liquor cabinet. "Will you just... leave?"

"Well, it's like you and Donna," Gregor said seriously.

"How can it be like me and Donna?"

Her fingers tapped on the side table. "Weren't you intending to marry her?"

"That's... not fair, Gregor."

"Neither is life. In any case," the Emperor added with a peculiar emphasis, "she's not attracted to women."

 _Her loss_ , Ivan thought. The Betan surgeons had created a masterpiece. "But can I help at all? With anything?"

"I'll manage. It's all right, Ivan."

"No, it's _not_." The words escaped Ivan in a stream of babble. "We're all sworn to protect you and... even if you can't be Emperor anymore, that doesn't mean you can just run off. What if you get kidnapped by Jacksonian sex slavers or something?"

Gregor gave him a look. "That's not a very likely scenario."

"But I'd still worry about it!"

"Ivan, just because I'm female that doesn't mean you need to patronize me."

"I don't see why you can't come back to Barrayar," he said unhappily. "Maybe... take a job in the Residence. Be around your kids."

Gregor stared at him. "Are you... Ivan, I'm not qualified for anything like that. Do you have any idea how severe the requirements for those jobs are? Especially for female staff. It's a specialized skill set, and one I don't have. And I'm not Miles, my accent flags me as High Vor in a heartbeat."

"But, well, um, what _are_ you qualified for?"

Gregor laughed bleakly.

"I mean, you tried this as a man and you ended up getting kidnapped by Jacksonians then..."

"That was very different."

"And Miles and Mark _both_ got kidnapped by Jacksonian sex slavers and they're guys!"

She gave him a mildly exasperated look.

"The galaxy is a dangerous place, that's all I'm saying."

She looked down at her hands. "Not as dangerous as Barrayar. Not to someone like me. I'm an outsider now, whether I want to be or not. There's no place for me."

He swallowed. Thought very hard about what he was going to say.

"There are... possible solutions," he said, very carefully.

She looked at him sideways, uncomprehending.

"Like marriage," he said.

Her eyebrows flew up.

"You can't... pretend your way in to the High Vor as a woman. But you can marry in, and nobody would bat an eye. Even as my fiancée, you'd have..." He stopped. Gregor was choking a little.

"Er, go on," she said.

"You could continue your life in a familiar setting. You'd have access, I mean. To Laisa, to your children, to... whoever you want to be open about this to."

"Nobody ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up," Gregor said. Her smile turned peculiar. "But if they had, I wouldn't have said _Lady Vorpatril_."

Ivan winced again. "I..."

"Sh." She sat down heavily. "Are you serious about this?"

"As serious as I have to be."

Her look at him was still slightly incredulous. "I am trying to envision how this would work."

"I know you like women," Ivan said hastily. "I wouldn't be planning to... impose, or anything."

"Men," Gregor corrected.

Ivan digested that, eyes a little wide. "Men?"

"It's one of the more bizarre side effects of all this."

"Oh." He swallowed.

"Not that I am necessarily agreeing to this plan, but if your intent is to pretend to be my fiancé I don't see why that should stop you."

Ivan covertly looked at Gregor and found her covertly looking at him. Their eyes met uncomfortably.

"Do I pass?" she asked abruptly.

"What?"

"As female. As... not the Emperor. If you're suggesting this, I'll have to pass every day for the rest of my life. Instead of moving somewhere where nobody will care if I was a man, or which man I was."

"Oh. Um. Yes. You're tall. And... a little mannish and military. Just the way you behave. No worse than Elena, really. But nobody would mistake you for... your voice is different. Your face is different. You're absolutely gorgeous, Gregor. Uh. Margaret."

She smiled a little. "You're not helping your case."

"You're my friend, and my liege. I don't want to lose you. I don't want you to lose everything." His voice went very small. "I don't want to put you in a box. But I have no idea what we'd do without you."

"This is all very Old Vor," Gregor sighed. "I have to say, Ivan, I never thought you capable of this sort of cynical matrimonial calculus."

"Nothing else has worked for me," Ivan said, more honestly than he intended. "Come home. Think about things. You can always leave later."

"I never realized how brave Dono was, to come back," Gregor said quietly. "But I'm Vor. I'm not afraid." Her gaze slipped sideways. "No promises, Ivan."

He reached over, and picked up her hand, bringing it to his lips to kiss. "Don't worry, Lady Margaret. It'll be the time of your life."


End file.
